The Frontier Kid

By this time, I had gotten acquainted with quite a few guys in Frontier. One of the bunch had joined the CCC's the year before, and due to the fact I had wheels, we decided to visit him at West Branch, MI, about 140 mile north of Frontier. There were six of us crammed into the old T, and we took off. We arrived OK and stayed overnight with him. (Note: The CCC's was the Civil Conservation Corp that F.D.R. had established during the Depression for employment of young men.) Their job mostly was cleaning forests and replanting trees destroyed by forest fires, etc. To this day, their evidence is clearly visible in the north by the neat rows of pine even seen along the road. Some call them plantation pine.

Coming home from West Branch was a different story, however. We got about halfway home somewhere north of Kalamazoo and the clutch band burned out. As long as we could drive in high it was ok, but where the low range was needed, like going up a big hill on an old gravel road, (all roads were gravel and hilly back then) it would stall. So, it was necessary to turn around and back up the hill. We had to do this all the way to Frontier. Sometimes with us pushing, too.